The teaching / tutoring thread

[Nix_Hex]

8/23/2014 - use this thread to talk about any teacher-related experiences. see post 6 for more explanation.

Here's a big intro so you have some background: Anyone who knows me well knows that I have been unemployed for some time. Two years to be exact. I did fill the void with grad school (Electrical Engineering) so it's not like I wasn't busy but I sure spent a lot of time building up debt via student loans, as well as living off a sizable but not huge amount of savings from my late grandmother. After graduating in March, depleting my savings, and a failure of a job hunt, I have been blessed with a job. My grad school adviser emailed me last monday asking if I was working and said that the Engineering Technology dept. at my school needed a teacher, immediately. He put in a good word for me; two days later I went in for an interview, then in the past week I've been collecting letters of recommendation and last night I filled out a job app.

This is mainly addressed to older smogoners who have experience teaching either at the K-12 or college level, or for any smogoners who have at least some tutoring experience. One class is an introductory DC / AC circuits class for Engineering Technology which is pretty much Engineering but much less focus on calculus and diff equations and more focused on hands-on and practical learning. I'll also be teaching a course on printed circuit board manufacturing (which I have no experience with but am studying up on).

What are some tips that you may have on teaching? I want to give my students the best experience possible because my school has a very good reputation (ironically with like 80% crappy faculty but maybe that's all colleges?) and it's a low level class so it sets the tone for their education.
-What's it like to be in front of a class for 75 minutes at a time?
-Do you find yourself slowing down in order to fill up empty gaps in time?
-Do you use powerpoint or write on a chalk/white board?
-Are pre-written notes and handouts a good idea?
-How long does it take to grade 20-30 papers, tests, and homework?

Any other advice you could give me would be much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

 

[LadyMilotic]

Hmm I'm in grad school at the moment and I believe there are lots of opportunities to tutor/present in front of people that they give to grad students. I also have a parent who is an academic so based on those experiences, I'll try and answer your questions as best as I can:

-What's it like to be in front of a class for 75 minutes at a time?
You sound nervous/not used to giving talks in front of people. I'm not calling you out but I wonder if you've taken an tutor positions while in grad school. It can be dautning at first but once you give the same lecture twice each week and become comfortable with your course area, you should be ok. Pre-lecture gitters; it shows your human :D

-Do you find yourself slowing down in order to fill up empty gaps in time?
I tend to find that people I know talk faster! If you find you have extra time after giving your lecture, you should arrange question time for your students. That way they don't come up to you after the end of the lecture when you want to head off to the staff room for your regular coffee. Plus, I think it's ok to finish a bit early. Your students will love you for it.

-Do you use powerpoint or write on a chalk/white board?
Powerpoint. We live in the digital age. I usually just take a USB with what I need and plug it into the computer/projector apparatus in the room. Laser pointers are good. Use one arm to point and your other arm to grab onto your elbow so you're not shaking as you point.

-Are pre-written notes and handouts a good idea?
I reckon you should encourage your students to take notes down. It's a good way for them to learn and absorb info. You should probably only give these notes and handouts out come exam time. You don't want to spoon feed your students too much.

Think of it like RNG guides. A lot of people put effort into making those guides and if others want to know, they should read it. If they're really stuck, they can ask people on the help thread but under no circumstances (or if the people are really nice and have a lot of time on their hands) would you get one on one tutoring on RNG.

RNG guide = your lecture
Outstanding RNG questions = your end of lecture question time
One on one RNG tutoring = handouts at the start of lecture period

-How long does it take to grade 20-30 papers, tests, and homework?
It gets quicker as you gain more experience. Obviously the first time around it's annoying and long but it gets faster. Also, again, we live in the digital age. For homework and smaller tests, you should negotiate with the course coordinator to move everything to online (and upload answers to online; only to be shown to students after they complete the exam). That could save you marking time. The only things that should be marked by hand ideally are end of semester exams.

Hope this helped! I'm almost finished with grad school but I speak with experience doing some of this myself and helping out a parent for 10+ years, who is in the academic profession.

 

[Oglemi]

- Set your expectations of the class as the professor and layout the class ahead immediately on the first day. This is super important to set the stage for the class ahead, and helps you immediately field any concerns and questions from the class

- Don't provide pre-written notes, and only do handouts if there's a lot of visuals or equations that need solving or referral to. Do provide the lecture slides at the end of class.

- Time actually goes by very quickly as you lecture, so you'll be pressed for time more than anything, and people LOVE leaving class early if you finish early, so really don't fret about that kind of stuff. Just make sure you hit all the points you need to and space things out logically over the semester (don't fill a day with a shitton of info and then have the next couple just be meandering/empty classes).

- O and please for the love of God don't do attendance at all or introductions on the first day unless the class is under 30 people.

 

[billymills]

I can only offer a student's perspective, but it's in the right discipline so it might be helpful.

The best advice is to follow what you liked when you were going through the program.

Some tips I'd suggest:

Talk to other professors in the department who have taught the course. Some profs are very open with their class notes (will pass them on to other profs teaching the course), others aren't. Ask around and you might be able to get a good grasp of the pacing, or otherwise.

Handouts are debatable. They're useful for diagrams, tables, charts, or otherwise; they're likely good for circuit board manufacturing. For circuits, printed off diagrams of the problems you're going to do might work, but again it might better to make people draw their own diagrams.
Homework handouts are nice. Make sure to leave them somewhere people can pick them up as they come in late (people will come in late).

Electronic versions of notes are a must. Get them up online the day of the lecture at the latest. I swore by these in my classes. Assignments being available online is necessary too. Either on the school's own program, or your own website. Doesn't matter as long as they're available (I've had a couple courses with skeletal html sites to download pdfs). Step by step circuit analysis available online would be good here too.

I'd recommend whiteboard/chalkboard for circuits. Most of the class will be expecting a lot of examples that they can follow along and copy. This is especially true if your program's focus is practical. Most will be expecting primarily examples. Powerpoint slides showing important steps does work, but working through the examples is necessary (powerpoints as review and as online supplementary material is good). Remember you doing something is the reason people are coming to class. If you're reading off a powerpoint, there's no benefit to going to class. Demonstrating tricks/methods is best here.

For circuit board manufacturing, power point is going to be necessary. I'm not really familiar with this topic, but make sure you're doing something in class (working through problems of some sort, giving details about a certain process). If you're going to use power point, make sure they're not too cluttered.

Most of the courses I took, the professors never had time to finish all they wanted to cover. They'd push going 5 minutes over every lecture, and still ended the year 1 lecture short of what they wanted to accomplish. Ending early is fine, but it doesn't usually happen. If anything, keep an eye on the clock to be sure you don't go over too long. If you don't control the curriculum, chances are you'll be rushed.

 

[Myzozoa]

What are some tips that you may have on teaching? I want to give my students the best experience possible because my school has a very good reputation (ironically with like 80% crappy faculty but maybe that's all colleges?) and it's a low level class so it sets the tone for their education.
-What's it like to be in front of a class for 75 minutes at a time?
-Do you find yourself slowing down in order to fill up empty gaps in time?
-Do you use powerpoint or write on a chalk/white board?
-Are pre-written notes and handouts a good idea?
-How long does it take to grade 20-30 papers, tests, and homework?

Hi am an undergraduate tutor employed by the university I attend, I usually stand in front of 5-10 students and help them learn things and do homework for an hour to 75 minutes at a time. Tutoring is different than lecturing since youre supposed to be responding directly to your student's needs, however, this still involves lecturing sometimes as people don't always know everything covered in lectures. It's really not that hard to be in front of people for a long time if you have a good flow and psychologically prepare yourself to be on it for the duration. Preparation is the key to performance, I typically prepare questions and exercises before hand and plan out the order I will introduce concepts and examples for everything. I often make a flow chart that I can look at for ease if I feel like Im forgetting something important or getting lost in the order of things. I always write on a white board/chalk board, never power point, you have to work out problems anyway. The best compromise might be a projector, you can write your notes before-hand and then work out problems during your lecture. Hand outs can be waste of paper, but for a smaller size class it can be very helpful. In larger lecture classes I would put resources online, assuming your university has the infrastructure. For a science course handouts are massively helpful for compiling formulas that your students will need to use. If you find yourself in a lecturing position, base your tests on previous years midterms/finals and then release the previous year's tests so your students can practice on similar problems, you will also get glowing evals from all the students who don't fail your courses in surprise at the content on the tests...

Idk how long grading takes for whatever subject you'll be doing, but I can grade and leave feedback on an essay in 10-15minutes/paper (length dependant) and I know others who can grade way faster. Grading intro science homework is faster than essays usually.


If youre working discussion sections as a teaching assistant youll want to learn some interactive learning strategies and pair and group work methods.

If you prep a lot, and it sucks because you usually can't bill all the time you prep, you'll be fine.

 

[Nix_Hex]

Thank you all so much! Interesting to see the split opinion on powerpoint vs whiteboard but I think whiteboard is going to win out on this by a long shot. And for online material, my university definitely does have the infrastructure to support online material but I will probably be setting up my own website on another host (like hostgator or something) so I have complete control over my content. I'm kind of rambling at this point, but this will help me with online notes. Also billymills have you ever heard of falstad? He has a bunch of science and physics applets and his circuit app is basically a poor man's pspice. That thing has saved my life a number of times and I'll recommend it to my students in order to check their work to make sure they're getting the right value for a steady state current or something.

Interestingly enough LadyMilotic I have written an RNG guide myself :-p and two of my badges came from grinding out LONG articles so I definitely know how to design a curriculum. And lol Oglemi there will be no introductions -- engineers don't know how to talk.

 

[billymills]

I had not heard of him, but those applets are great. It's good fun just looking at all the examples.

 

[Nix_Hex]

Okay so everyone who has responded so far has been incredibly helpful but I don't want to make this just a "help me!" thread and have it serve its purpose and die.

From now on, this thread is about teaching and tutoring. Share your teaching or tutoring experiences, from doing it yourself or for ranting about your current teachers / professors. Or, for talking about how amazing your professors are and why and how, etc. Have fun!

e: you can also talk about your battling 101 or mentorship experiences. don't be a jerk though hah.